This is the second and final part of a two-part series. Part 1 is here; the outline of the series can be found at Part 1.
Rav Yitzhak - Hosea describes people making portable images of their own gods, carrying them in their pockets, and embracing and kissing them - Hosea 13:2
אמר רבי יצחק:
מאי דכתיב
״ועתה יוספו לחטא
ויעשו להם מסכה מכספם
כתבונם עצבים וגו׳״
Rav Yitzḥak says:
What is the meaning of that which is written:
“And now they continue to sin,
and have made for themselves molten images of their silver,
idols (עצבים) according to their own understanding (תבונם),
all of them the work of the craftsmen; of them they say: Those who sacrifice men kiss calves” (Hosea 13:2)
מאי ״כתבונם עצבים״?
מלמד ש
כל אחד ואחד עשה דמות יראתו
ומניחה בכיסו,
בשעה שזוכרה --
מוציאה מתוך חיקו
ומחבקה ומנשקה.
What is the meaning of the expression: “idols according to their own understanding [ki-t’vunam]”?
The word ki-t’vunam is interpreted as meaning: According to their image [ke-tavnitam], and the verse teaches that
each and every person would make an image (דמות) of his deity1
and place it in his purse (כיסו).
When he would remember it --
he would remove it from his bosom (חיקו)
and embrace it and kiss it.
R’ Yitzhak of R’ Ami’s school - Pagan priests targeted wealthy men by training sacred calves to run toward them, then claiming that the idol desired them as human sacrifices so that the priests could inherit their property - Hosea 13:2
מאי ״זבחי אדם עגלים ישקון״?
אמר רבי יצחק דבי רבי אמי:
שהיו כומרים נותנים עיניהם בבעלי ממון,
ומרעיבים את העגלים,
ועושין דמות עצבים,
ומעמידין בצד אבוסיהן,
ומוציאין אותן לחוץ.
What is the meaning of the statement: “Those who sacrifice men kiss calves”?
R’ Yitzḥak of the school of R’ Ami says:
It means that pagan priests2 would set their eyes on the wealthy,
and they would starve the calves that were objects of worship,
and make statues in the image of those wealthy people,
and place those statues next to the troughs of the calves,
and they would take those calves outside.
כיון שראו אותן
רצין אחריהן
וממשמשין בהן,
אומרים לו:
עבודה זרה חפץ בך,
יבא ויזבח עצמו לו.
When the calves would see those wealthy people, whose image they were used to seeing near their troughs,
they would run after them
and paw them (ממשמשין).
At this point the priests would say to that wealthy person:
The deity, the calf,
desires you;
let the Master come and sacrifice himself to it.
The priests would then inherit his property.
Rava - Rejects the previous reading of Hosea: the verse means that someone who sacrifices his son to an idol is rewarded by being permitted to kiss the calf-idol - Hosea 13:2
אמר רבא:
האי ״זבחי אדם עגלים ישקון״?
״עגלים ישקון לזבח אדם״ מיבעי ליה!
Rava says:
That is not the correct interpretation of the verse, as the wording “those who sacrifice men kiss calves” is unsuitable for that interpretation,
since in that case the verse should have stated: “They make calves kiss to sacrifice men.”
אלא אמר רבא:
— כל הזובח את בנו לעבודה זרה,
אמר לו:
דורון גדול הקריב לו,
יבא וישק לו.
Rather, Rava says that the verse is to be understood as follows:
Whenever anyone sacrifices his son to a pagan deity —
the priest says to him:
The Master has sacrificed a great gift3 to the idol;
therefore, he has the right to come and kiss it.
The verse means that the reward of “those who sacrifice men” is to kiss calves.
Rav Yehuda citing Rav - Identifies the foreign gods of II Kings with animal forms: Succoth-Benoth as a hen, Nergal as a rooster, Ashima as a bald billy goat, Nibhaz and Tartak as a dog and donkey, and Adrammelech and Anammelech as a mule and horse - II Kings 17:30–31
אמר רב יהודה, אמר רב:
״ואנשי בבל עשו את סכות בנות״,
ומאי ניהו? תרנגולת.
״ואנשי כות עשו את נרגל״,
ומאי ניהו? תרנגול.
״ואנשי חמת עשו את אשימא״,
ומאי ניהו? ברחא קרחא.
״והעוים עשו את נבחן ואת תרתק״,
ומאי ניהו? כלב וחמור.
״והספרוים שרפים את בניהם ואת בנותיהם באש לאדרמלך וענמלך אלהי ספרוים״,
ומאי ניהו? הפרד והסוס.
Rav Yehuda says that Rav says with regard to the verse describing the peoples that were settled in Samaria by the Assyrians:
“And the men of Babylonia made Succoth-Benoth” (II Kings 17:30);
and what is this idol? It is the image of a hen.
“And the men of Cuth made Nergal” (II Kings 17:30);
and what is it? It is the image of a rooster.
“And the men of Hamath made Ashima” (II Kings 17:30);
and what is it? It is the image of a bald billy goat.4
“And the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak” (II Kings 17:31);
and what are they? The image of a dog and a donkey.
“And the Sepharvites burned their sons and their daughters in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim” (II Kings 17:31);
and what are they? The mule and the horse.
(See footnote.)5
אדרמלך –
דאדר ליה למריה בטעינה,
וענמלך –
דעני ליה למריה בקרבא.
And why are they called that?:
A mule is called Adrammelech
because it honors [addar] its master with its load, i.e., because it carries the master’s load,
and a horse is called Anammelech
because it responds [anei] to its master, assisting him in battle.
Hezekiah’s father attempted to burn him as a pagan sacrifice, but his mother protected him with salamander blood
אף חזקיה מלך יהודה ביקש אביו לעשות לו כן,
אלא שסכתו אמו סלמנדרא.
The Talmud relates: The father of Hezekiah, king of Judea, also attempted to do so to him, i.e., to burn him as an offering to an idol,
but his mother rubbed him with the blood of a salamander,6
a creature created out of fire and immune to the effects of fire, whose blood is fireproof.
Rav Yehuda citing Rav - Israel originally knew that idolatry was insubstantial, and practiced it only as a means of publicly permitting forbidden sexual relations
אמר רב יהודה, אמר רב:
יודעין היו ישראל בעבודה זרה שאין בה ממש,
ולא עבדו עבודה זרה אלא להתיר להם עריות בפרהסיא.
§ Rav Yehuda says that Rav says:
The Jewish people knew that idol worship is of no substance; they did not actually believe in it.
And they worshipped idols only in order to permit themselves to engage in forbidden sex in public,7
since many pagan rituals included sex.
R’ Elazar - Israel later remembered its idolatrous altars with the emotional attachment of a person longing for his child, showing that they eventually became genuinely attached to idolatry - Jeremiah 17:2
מתיב רב משרשיא:
״כזכר בניהם מזבחותם וגו׳״,
ואמר רבי אלעזר:
כאדם שיש לו געגועין על בנו?
Rav Mesharshiyya raises an objection to this statement from the following verse:
“Like the memory of their sons are their altars, and their Asherim are by the leafy trees, upon the high hills” (Jeremiah 17:2).
And R’ Elazar says that
this means that the Jewish people would recall their idol worship like a person who misses (געגועין) his child.
This interpretation indicates that they were truly attached to idol worship.
The Talmud reconciles Rav with R’ Elazar: Israel initially adopted idolatry for sexual license, but afterward became genuinely attached to it
בתר דאביקו ביה.
The Talmud answers: This was the case after the Jewish people became attached to idol worship, at which point they began to actually believe in it.
At first, they were drawn to idol worship only due to their lust.
Baraita - Elijah encountered a starving child in Jerusalem, tried to teach him to say the ‘Shema’, but the child’s family had taught him to reject even mentioning God’s name (=‘YHWH’)
תא שמע:
״ונתתי פגריכם על פגרי גלוליכם״.
אמר:
אליהו הצדיק היה מחזר על תפוחי רעב שבירושלים.
The Talmud suggests: Come and hear a proof that the Jewish people engaged in idol worship for its own sake and not for the sake of engaging in forbidden sex:
In interpretation of the verse: “And I shall cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols” (Leviticus 26:30),
the rabbis say that
Elijah the Righteous, the prophet, would search for those who were swollen (תפוחי) with hunger in Jerusalem.8
פעם אחת
מצא תינוק שהיה תפוח ומוטל באשפה.
one time
[Elijah] found a child who was swollen with hunger and lying in the garbage.
אמר לו: מאיזה משפחה אתה?
אמר לו: ממשפחה פלונית אני.
אמר לו: כלום נשתייר מאותה משפחה?
אמר לו: לאו, חוץ ממני.
אמר לו: אם אני מלמדך דבר שאתה חי בו, אתה למד?
אמר לו: הן.
אמר לו: אמור בכל יום: ״שמע ישראל, ה׳ אלהינו, ה׳ אחד״.
אמר לו: הס,
שלא להזכיר בשם ה׳,
שלא לימדו אביו ואמו.
Elijah said to the child: From which family are you?
The child said to him: I am from such and such family.
Elijah said to him: Isn’t there anyone left from that family?
The child said to him: No one is left besides me.
Elijah said to him: If I teach you something through which you will live, will you learn it?
The child said to him: Yes.
Elijah said to him: Say every day: “Listen Israel, YHWH is our God; YHWH is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4), i.e., the Shema
The child said to him: Hush,
so as not to mention the name of YHWH (see Amos 6:10).
The child did not want to even hear the mention of the name of YHWH, which his father and his mother did not teach him.
the child instead embraced his idol, until he died upon it - Leviticus 26:30; Deuteronomy 6:4; Amos 6:10
מיד הוציא יראתו מחיקו,
ומחבקה ומנשקה,
עד שנבקעה כריסו
ונפלה יראתו לארץ,
ונפל הוא עליה,
לקיים מה שנאמר:
״ונתתי את פגריכם על פגרי גלוליכם״.
Immediately, the child removed his god from his bosom
and began hugging it and kissing it,
until his stomach burst (נבקעה) from hunger,
and his idol (יראתו) fell to the earth and he fell upon it,
in fulfillment of that which is stated:
“And I shall cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols” (Leviticus 26:30).
This incident demonstrates that the Jewish people engaged in idol worship for its own sake.
בתר דאביקו ביה.
The Talmud answers: This also occurred after the Jewish people became attached to idol worship.
Appendix 1 - Economic Decline as Punishment for Sabbatical-Year Violations in Leviticus 25: From Selling Property to Selling Oneself (Kiddushin 20a-b)
This baraita citing R’ Yosei b. Hanina states that even a relatively minor violation involving Sabbatical-Year produce leads to progressively harsher economic consequences.
It presents a steadily worsening chain of consequences: prohibited commerce in Sabbatical-Year produce → sale of movable property → fields → house → daughter → borrowing at interest → self-sale → sale to a non-Jew → service of idolatry.
The Passage
Kiddushin/20a#16 thru 20b#1
[...]
תניא:
רבי יוסי ברבי חנינא אומר:
בא וראה כמה קשה אבקה של שביעית
[...]
it is taught in a baraita that
R’ Yosei, son of R’ Ḥanina, says:
Come and see how harsh is the violation of even a hint (אבקה) of the Sabbatical Year,
i.e., how great are the punishments not just for working the land, but also for treating lightly the sanctity of Sabbatical-Year produce.
One who trades in Sabbatical-Year produce will ultimately be forced to sell his movable property - Leviticus 25:13-14
אדם נושא ונותן בפירות שביעית –
לסוף מוכר את מטלטליו,
שנאמר:
״בשנת היובל תשבו איש אל אחזתו״,
וסמיך ליה:
״וכי תמכרו ממכר לעמיתך או קנה מיד עמיתך״ –
דבר הנקנה מיד ליד.
If a person has commercial dealings (נושא ונותן) with Sabbatical-Year produce, which is prohibited --
ultimately he will become so poor that he will have to sell his movable property (מטלטליו),
as it is stated:
“In this Jubilee Year you shall return every man to his land” (Leviticus 25:13),
and juxtaposed to it is the verse:
“And if you sell any item to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor’s hand” (Leviticus 25:14),
which is referring to an item acquired by passing it from hand to hand.
This teaches that if one sins with regard to the Jubilee Year or the Sabbatical Year, which have many identical halakhot, he will eventually have to sell his movable property.
If the sinner does not recognize the punishment and repent, he will ultimately be forced to sell his fields - Leviticus 25:25
לא הרגיש –
לסוף מוכר את שדותיו,
שנאמר:
״כי ימוך אחיך ומכר מאחזתו״.
If one does not sense (הרגיש) that he is being punished and does not repent --
ultimately he will have to sell his fields,
as it is stated in an adjacent verse:
“If your brother grows poor and sells of his ancestral land” (Leviticus 25:25).
If he still does not repent, he will ultimately be forced to sell his house - Leviticus 25:29
לא באת לידו עד שמוכר את ביתו,
שנאמר:
״כי ימכר בית מושב עיר חומה״.
[...]
If no move toward repentance comes to his hand, he will have to sell his house,
as it is stated:
“And if a man sells a dwelling-house in a walled city” (Leviticus 25:29).
[...]
If he still does not repent, his poverty will eventually force him to sell his daughter into slavery - Exodus 21:7
לא באת לידו עד שמוכר את בתו,
שנאמר:
״וכי ימכר איש את בתו לאמה״,
[...]
The Talmud resumes its citation of the baraita: If no move toward repentance comes to his hand,
his poverty will increase until he sells his daughter,
as it is stated:
“And when a man sells his daughter as a slave (אמה)” (Exodus 21:7).
[...]
If he still does not repent, he will eventually be forced to borrow at interest - Leviticus 25:35-36
לא באת לידו עד שלוה ברבית,
שנאמר:
״וכי ימוך אחיך ומטה ידו עמך״,
וסמיך ליה:
״אל תקח מאתו וגו׳״.
If no move toward repentance comes to his hand, he will eventually need to borrow with interest,
as it is stated:
“And if your brother grows poor and his means fails with you” (Leviticus 25:35),
and juxtaposed to it is the verse:
“Take no usury or interest from him” (Leviticus 25:36).
If he still does not repent, he will eventually be forced to sell himself into slavery - Leviticus 25:39
לא באת לידו עד שמוכר את עצמו,
שנאמר:
״וכי ימוך אחיך
ונמכר לך״.
If no move toward repentance comes to his hand, he will eventually need to sell himself,
as it is stated:
“And if your brother grows poor with you
and sells himself to you” (Leviticus 25:39).
His decline will progress further: he will be sold not merely to a Jew, but to a ger toshav - Leviticus 25:47
לא לך אלא לגר,
שנאמר:
״לגר״,
The baraita further states: Not only will he be sold to you, a born Jew, but he will even be sold to a stranger,
as it is stated:
“And sells himself to a stranger [ger]” (Leviticus 25:47).
ולא לגר צדק
אלא לגר תושב שנאמר:
״גר תושב״.
And this sale to a ger is not referring to a sale to a righteous convert [ger tzedek],
but even to a non-Jew who resides in Eretz Yisrael and observes the 7 Noahide mitzvot [ger toshav],
as it is stated:
“And sells himself to a stranger who is a settler [ger toshav]” (Leviticus 25:47).
“A stranger’s family” refers to a non-Jew, indicating that he will ultimately be sold to a non-Jew - Leviticus 25:47
״משפחת גר״ –
זה נכרי.
With regard to the continuation of the verse, “or to an offshoot of a stranger’s family,” the baraita/Talmud expounds:
“A stranger’s family”;
this is a non-Jew,
i.e., he will reach a state where he has no choice but to sell himself to a non-Jew.
“To an offshoot (la-eker)” represents the lowest stage: he will ultimately be sold to be a slave for pagan worship - Leviticus 25:47
כשהוא אומר:
״לעקר״ –
זה הנמכר לעבודה זרה עצמה.
When it says:
“To an offshoot of a stranger’s family,”
this is referring to one sold to the idol itself,
i.e., he is forced to sell himself as a slave to work in a pagan temple.
Appendix 2 - The Greco-Roman context of our sugya
The concerns of our sugya belong to a religious environment in which divine names, cult images, sacrifice, household worship, and public ritual were pervasive features of daily life. In the Greco-Roman world, religion was embedded in domestic, civic, commercial, and political activity rather than confined to temples or explicitly theological settings. Gods were invoked in oaths, honored through sacrifices and offerings, represented by statues and small household images, and associated with cities, professions, families, and particular places. The Talmudic attempt to regulate even the casual mention of a foreign god therefore addresses a form of speech that could arise naturally in ordinary interactions with non-Jews.
The prohibition against causing a non-Jew to swear by his god is especially understandable in this context. Oaths invoking divine witnesses were common in Greek and Roman legal and social life, and swearing by a god could function as a serious guarantee of truthfulness or fidelity. The concern attributed to Shmuel’s father, that a commercial partnership might eventually produce litigation or a demand for an oath in the partner’s god’s name, reflects a society in which economic relations could easily intersect with religious formulas. The rabbinic restriction effectively attempts to prevent a Jew from becoming causally involved in a pagan act of invocation.
The sugya’s descriptions of portable or personally cherished idols also have close material parallels. Greek and Roman religion was filled with cult images on very different scales, from monumental temple statues to small bronze and terracotta figures. Roman households commonly maintained shrines containing images of the Lares and other protective deities. The Lares could be represented by small statuettes before which household members prayed and made offerings; hundreds of domestic shrines are known from Pompeii alone. The Talmud’s image of someone carrying a representation of his god close to his body and periodically embracing or kissing it is highly polemical, but the underlying picture of religion mediated through small, tangible divine images fits well within the material culture of the Roman world.
The same applies more broadly to the sugya’s emphasis on sacrifice. Animal sacrifice stood at the center of much Greek religious practice, particularly the sacrifice of cattle, sheep, and goats, and religious relations were commonly conceptualized through reciprocal gifts between worshippers and gods. Against that background, the Talmud’s stories of priests manipulating sacrificial expectations, and especially its recurring references to human and child sacrifice, represent an extreme and hostile characterization of foreign cult. Human sacrifice was not an ordinary feature of contemporary Greco-Roman civic religion. The passages instead combine biblical depictions of foreign worship with rabbinic polemic, placing the most violent biblical forms of idolatry within a larger imaginative category of pagan sacrifice.
The permission to mock idolatry likewise has a significant Greco-Roman analogue. Pagan gods themselves could be subjected to literary comedy and satire. Lucian of Samosata, writing in the second century CE, repeatedly mocked traditional gods, myths, religious specialists, and human claims about divine activity. Modern scholarship generally treats his satire as operating within Greco-Roman religious culture rather than simply demonstrating atheistic rejection of it. The rabbinic position is considerably more programmatic: mockery of idolatry is singled out as permissible precisely because degradation serves an anti-idolatrous purpose. The grotesque interpretations of Bel and Nevo stooping to defecate belong to a broader classical culture in which gods could be made comic, but the Talmud deploys such humor explicitly as religious polemic.
A final point of comparison concerns the Talmud’s distinction between belief and practice. Rav claims that Israel initially practiced idolatry while knowing that it “had no substance,” adopting it because it facilitated forbidden sexual behavior; only afterward did habitual practice produce genuine attachment. This rabbinic model is far removed from modern assumptions that religious practice necessarily begins with explicit doctrinal belief. Greco-Roman religion itself was heavily centered on ritual performance, sacrifice, festivals, vows, and customary observance, without requiring adherence to a single creed or authoritative theology. Greek religion, for example, possessed no single scriptural or doctrinal system comparable to the Torah, and ritual exchange between gods and humans remained fundamental. The rabbinic account is polemical, but it assumes a similarly important distinction between performing a cult and intellectually affirming its theology.
Seen in this broader setting, the sugya addresses forms of paganism that would have been materially familiar in the Roman and late antique world: divine names embedded in speech, gods represented through images, household cults, sacrifice, ritualized gestures of devotion, and religious practices that could exist independently of systematic theological conviction. Its distinctive contribution is to reinterpret these familiar features through an aggressively anti-idolatrous framework, regulating contact with them while simultaneously explaining their attraction and attempting to deprive them of prestige.
יראתו - literally: “his fear”, i.e., the object of his fear. This is a common Talmudic idiom for a pagan deity.
On this word, see Jastrow (modernized), entry “יִרְאָה”, sense #3:
3) object of fear, idol.
Sanhedrin 106a:11 הוציאה יִרְאָתָהּ וכ׳ - “she took her idol out of her bosom”
Pesikta Vayehi. p. 65b; Mekhilta Bo. section 13 יִרְאָתֵנוּ - “our (Egyptian) deity”
and frequently.
Plural: יִרְאוֹת.
Ibid. Beshallach, Vayehi, section 1;
Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 230:8 מכל היראות שלהם - “of all their (the Egyptians’) gods”
On that passage in tractate Sanhedrin, see my “Pt2 The Prophet, the Prostitutes, and the Curses Reversed: The Biblical Story of Balaam in Numbers 23-25 (Sanhedrin 105b-106b)“, section “Balaam’s Plot: The Dramatic Story of How Prostitutes Led the Jewish Men Astray“.
On this word, see Jastrow (modernized), entry “כּוֹמֶר II”:
(Biblical Hebrew כְּמָרִים; כָּמַר to guard, compare כֹּהֵן. In Syriac כומרא interchanges with כהנא, see Payne Smith, ‘Thesaurus Syriacus’ 1757 under the word)
attendant, priest, always used of idolaters.
Kiddushin 20b:2 נעשה כומר לע”ז (Arakhin 30b:43 משרת) became an attendant of an idolatrous temple.
Pesikta Rabbati 35:1 יתרו לא כ׳ וכ׳ was not Jethro an idolatrous priest?;
and frequently.
Plural: כּוּמָרִים, כּוּמָרִין.
Avodah Zarah 51b:18 בטובת כומרין - “for the benefit of the idolatrous priests”, as opposed to עובדיה - “worshippers”
Yerushalmi ibid. 4, 43d bottom of page
Eruvin 79b bottom of page, in Manuscript Munich (printed edition: משרתי ע”ז).
Bereishit Rabbah 65, beginning:;
and frequently.
doron - from Greek.
ברחא קרחא.
Compare the usage of this idiomatic term elsewhere, in my “From Eunuch-ville to Bald-town: A Eunuch and R’ Yehoshua the Bald Trade Insults Over Physical Shortcomings (Shabbat 152a)“, section “Pt2 - A “bald buck vs. a “castrated goat” “, and see my note there.
I previously cited the following passage, in a note in my “Biblical Figures in the Talmud: Counts, Contexts, and Index“, section “Additional Selected entries (figures who <20 times in the Talmud; a list of ~20 figures), With Index“, on list item “Anammelech“.
salamandera - from Greek.
פרהסיא - from Greek.
Note that there was a famous famine in Elijah’s own lifetime, under Ahab (1 Kings 17-18), which affected the northern kingdom, especially Samaria. However, Ahab ruled Israel, while Jerusalem belonged to the separate kingdom of Judah. The biblical Elijah is not associated with a famine in Jerusalem.
So the passage’s “those swollen with hunger in Jerusalem” seems to point more straightforwardly to the famine during the Babylonian siege before 586 BCE, right before the Destruction of the First Temple. This makes Elijah a legendary figure in the story, much as he appears throughout the Talmud.